Wednesday, March 9, 2011

[Comic title: "Advertising"; alt text: "I remember the exact moment in my childhood when I realized, while reading a flyer, that nobody would ever spend money solely to tell me they wanted to give me something for nothing. It's a much more vivid memory than the (related) parental Santa talk."]

You'd better be fucking happy, Randy. You've finally produced a comic with so many blatant flaws I'm writing an actual goddamn review of it. Are you content now? Are you at ease, now that you have a few days where you can attempt to replicate what Megan's milk must taste like without being pestered about how creepy it is? Fuck you, Randy. Fuck you.

Let's start with the first panel, shall we? This one is annoying for the same reason 169 was annoying. Most notably: nobody actually uses that phrase. He's combined "up to 15% off all items!" and "save 15% or more!" into one utterly retarded phrase. Randy, you see, is a disingenuous fuck. He desperately wants to seem like someone who is smart, so he creates situations in which people do things which bother him, because he is smart and they are not.

The second panel is what really pisses me off, though. It's dumb on so very many levels. First, this isn't a mathematical complaint. Randy is trying to leverage game theory here to prove some trait about human behavior. This is about as stupid as it sounds. The biggest problem, apart from the fact that game theory is not, in fact, a hard-coded law of human behavior, is that the game Randy has constructed is flawed. It seems to assume that the only form of expected value possible is monetary.

The basic assertion he's making is that people don't pay money for advertising unless they expect to recoup that money somehow. He feels that this is somehow disingenuous of advertisers to call it "free." And he thinks he has proven this mathematically. This is phenomenally stupid, given that Randy is a webcartoonist. While perhaps he is ignorant of this fact by virtue of spending about 95 percent of his brainpower imagining what Megan's nipples look like, webcartoonists are (a) offering a free service (b) pretty keen on buying advertising for that free service. Most of them, no doubt, are hoping to make money off their webcomic eventually, but I imagine a large sum of them are just interested in getting viewers. They are buying advertising because they expect that it will net them more readers--even if these readers do not make them any money whatsoever. I know I've considered buying advertising for my personal projects, which have no advertising and which will almost certainly not make me any money. I would only do this because I like having readers, not out of any desire to have money.

I'm not going to list all the various and sundry things that people spend money on advertising that are free. There's lots, though. This second panel is just another disingenuous attempt at Randy to pass off his incredibly poor understanding of human nature as some piercing insight into how the world works, or some savage denunciation of the treachery of the advertising industry. "How dare you claim that the things you aren't charging any money for are free, when you expect to recoup your losses through other means!"

The last panel--well, I wasted all my rage on the second panel, so it's hard to get that annoyed at it. I mean, sure, Randy's statement is incorrect: while there is a sale on, the more you spend at that time will save you more in the future, provided you were going to purchase those items anyway and provided you don't alter your rate of consumption because of buying in bulk. But he is right in suggesting that the principle is misleading, though, again, it's not because of any sort of mathematical property. It's just because sales are meant to exploit various bits of human psychology that mean you'll buy things you otherwise wouldn't. But if I'm saving $20 on an item that I just purchased, if I buy six of them I just saved $120 on those items. The more I spend on them, the more I save, as a flat rate. (Percentage-wise, of course, it remains the same, and as it applies to the money I personally have, the more I spend the less I'm able to put into savings, but that's not what "save" means here.)

And of course he has to point out that the slope is negative. Good one, Randy! COULDN'T SPOT THAT ON MY OWN.

I feel a momentary twinge of pity for Randy when I read the alt-text. Maybe he just remembers it because of one of those weird quirks of memory, but he makes it sound like he remembers it because it was a life-altering experience. "That's the moment I became a cynic," he seems to be saying. (Though he's probably the sort of dick that uses the word "realist" instead, the useless fuck.) "That's the moment I came to understand the world."

I can understand a child finding that an interesting revelation. I'm sure I thought that companies gave away free things just because they were really cool, and not because they thought it would improve customer loyalty or make money. But to look back on that moment as something profound is kind of sad.

Posted by
Rob

58 comments:

Your Panel 2 rant is spot-on. What I actually came here to complain about was the fact that every Geico commercial says they could save you "up to 15% or more on car insurance," but a quick Googling seems to indicate that they actually don't use the "up to." Probably because they know it's retarded.

For anyone who actually talks with real people using words... panel one's hypothetical advertisement really isn't that big an issue. These hypothetical salesfolk are obviously telling you, "we've calculated that you'll save somewhere between 0 - 15 % off," and add the "or more" simply because in today's society it's necessary as an "And if you save even more on our products, don't demand we give it to you for free or some shit like that because we're actually giving you a BETTER deal than advertised, you literalist cunt!"

I remember that the local grocery store had to give someone the product for free [up to $10] if it was improperly priced. Some guy came up and told the cashier that the bananas were listed too expensive; they rang up at half the price. So he demanded she give them for free because they were "mis-priced" when she asked him to pay less than its actual price. THESE PEOPLE EXIST.

I have seen "up to [X] or more" and I do hate it. Maybe his comic could have just been panel 1.

I do think your story about a person insisting on a discount because he was charged less than the list price is interesting in a horrific way, but I had never connected that with the "up to [X] or more" phrasing, and frankly I still think that's a stretch. I think it's just as likely that nobody proofread it closely, or they're copying the phrasing from something else that said it like that.

And even if it is to ward off the most incredibly asinine people in the universe, I still hate it. Much as I shake my head at some of the excerpts at http://www.dumbwarnings.com/

I'm pretty sure Geico uses "up to 15% or more." At least, that's what Google tells me. Pretty sure it's probably like what the evil carrion fowl Ravenzomg said, though. I.e., it's not that the advertisers are dumb or deliberately misleading, it's that some of their customers are dumb as shit.

It oughtn't to be too hard to understand. They believe that they can save you 15% or more. It's the "up to" that is added as a caveat to cover them in case they are mistaken.

Randle is correct that, in purely mathematical terms, the phrase is meaningless; but it takes up a lot less space and sounds better than "You should be able to save at least 15%, but it's possible we haven't considered every possible set of circumstances so you might not".

As ever with language, strict logic takes second place to getting the meaning across. If people understand it, it isn't really wrong.

OH yeah. I'm new here so Im trawling through the archives and I wanted to make a note that comic 636 is the one I think I've seen of a relationship comic where the guy is the observant one. Just making a note don't mind me.

I'm pretty happy with anyone who's denigrating XKCD. I'm so tired of people coming up to me and being all like 'nerds are so cool and so I pretend that XKCD is funnny because of ... that.' Or whatever makes them like the damn thing.

Honestly Rob, you could write a bunch of curses about XKCD/Randall on here and it would be cathartic to me, at least.

"nobody actually uses that phrase. He's combined 'up to 15% off all items!' and 'save 15% or more!'"I suggest you learn to use Google. I did a search for:+"up to" +% +"or more"and got 738,000,000 results (which is of course no more true than your statement. Just say a lot starting with these:#Medical Discount Center - Save up to 50% or more on Medical CareApr 9, 2007 ... Save up to 50% or more on Medical Care. Affordable individual and family health plan. Includes free dental, vision, prescription drug, ...www.medicaldiscountcenter.com/ - Cached#SALE Homes - Up to 40% or more off their original price -- ZipRealtyPrice Reduction. Any, 40% or more, 25% or more, 10% or more. Start searching for a great deal on SALE Homes! Contact Us · FAQs; Feedback & Suggestions ...www.ziprealty.com/homes/for-sale/search/form/sale - Cached#Save up to $1000 a year or more on commuting from TransitChekSave up to $1000 a year or more on commuting costs with the TransitChek commuter benefit program.exercisetheright.com/ - Cached - Similar#Up to $3500 or more with the New Jersey State Grants & Loans ...Firstech Environmental handles all aspects of NJ State Grants and Loans in New Jersey for (UST) underground storage tank removal.www.askusfirst.com/NJ-State-grants-and-loans-for-underground-storage-tank-removal.php - Cached

In strictly mathematical terms, it doesn't matter which variable is a function of the other. If the function y=f(x) is strictly monotonic (which is the case here), there f is invertible and there is a function x=g(y).

@Ravenz: Most grocery stores have a policy that if something is mis-priced they will either give it to you free (up to 10 dollars in value) or 10 dollars off. At a Safeway around here, I went through the register and something came up wrong. An old lady behind me piped up and said "He gets those free right?" Cashier replied "Only if he asks for it." I'd never have known otherwise.

There are policies put in place here that can save you money, why WOULDN'T you try to use them? I don't know if it's just a store policy, or law, or what. But if all you need to do is ask for it, they are hoping that your ignorance of policy, or your unwillingness to appear rude/embarrass yourself is going to stop you from doing it. Better to look the fool by asking for free stuff than to play the fool by paying money you didn't have to.

Nice job on this one. This comic annoyed me bad enough to want to make my own xkcd blog. BTW I do not read xkcd, but I can't fucking spend 2 minutes on facebook without some jerk posting some terrible and lame xkcd comic. Your blog is doing more for people like me than you can imagine.

I think 169 was meant as a dis to jokes like that in general. Like that one where someone asks if you know what something means, and then says, "Can you spell it?" Then you spell the word and they're like, "Ha! It's 'I-T'!"

Hah! So I wanted to see it with my own eyes and googled up http://www.google.com/search?q=%22up+to%22+%22or+more%22 and sure enough, all the first page was crap like "Save up to $1000 a year or more" except one result: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UpToOrMore

You are complaining that a web site you stumbled upon a while ago is not any more up to your standard. As if you were now entitled by right to read an excellent joke every 3 days. If you don't like it any more, don't read it. If you think it has become a waste of time, don't waste an order of magnitude more time complaining that it is a waste of time. Just remove xkcd from your bookmarks. You will live happier and longer.

I just love it. I agree with some but not all of your complaints. It doesn't really matter.

(and no, I have no idea whether Randall's rate is actually one joke every 3 days).

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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